América was a waitress, and Luis was living in San Francisco. They were in love, but they couldn’t find any way to bring her to the States. They never explained why. Maybe she had a record. She had no special skills to show the immigration people, and they couldn’t get her a green card or a visa.
Big Lé went several times with me to the States to see if the border with Canada was full of holes. He told Luis that he could get América through and dump her in San Francisco, if he paid the price. They talked about it a lot when Big Lé was down there. That’s the way it stood when Big Lé came back to Quebec.
Next summer Luis called him and asked if he’d agree to get América over the border for three thousand bucks. Lé should have said no, but he said yes. That’s how our problems started.
Meanwhile twelve fucking ragheads hijacked some planes to plough them here, there, and everywhere, right in Uncle Sam’s face.
Let’s just say the borders got a little less leaky after that.
*
The second mistake was to bring along Bezeau.
The original plan was to leave Arvida by car, pick up América at Dorval, sleep in Montreal at Cindy’s, my ex, then hit the road for Detroit the next day. We figured we could cross the border, then offer Luis, for a couple of thousand more, to bring his girlfriend all the way down to California. That made for a whole lot of driving, except between the time Luis called Big Lé to set things up, and when we were ready to head out, something else happened. The day after the Saint-Jean Baptiste party at Saint-Gédéon, Big Lé lost his licence when he hit a roadblock at nine in the morning where the road forked at Saint-Bruno. He’d swallowed some speed for dinner and some more at midnight. He wasn’t drunk any more, but the amount of alcohol he’d ingested between that morning and the day before was beyond calculation. We needed another driver, or else I’d have to do it all myself.
When we brought him in on the deal, Bezeau was famous.
He’d just done two years for holding up the Walmart in Chicoutimi. That idiot had gone in with a 12-gauge shotgun and come out with the cash from the registers. Then the cops had got on his heels as he was leaving the parking lot. Don’t ask me how, but he was able to outrun those guys for half an hour with his frigging old Topaz that did zero to 100 kilometres in about twelve minutes. They had to put down spike strips on the Boulevard des Saguenéens in front of the 247 convenience store. People saw him get out of the car and wait for the cops to come up to him, his arms in the air, giving them the finger.
We thought a guy like that must have steady nerves.
We were wrong.
In an old Reader’s Digest at my father’s they told the story of a man-eating tiger in India that had fed its whole litter with human flesh. A tiger that’s tasted human flesh will be a man-eater for the rest of its life, because our meat is salted from the salt we eat.
It took fifty years to get rid of the five crazy tigers and their mother.
The oldest of the Bezeau brothers, he’d done more or less the same thing for his little brothers, but with cocaine.
Mike, the Bezeau who came with us, got into coke when he was twelve. He came from a tribe of thieves and bottom feeders who broke into cottages and garages for about a hundred miles around. And I don’t think we’re going to be rid of them before the end of the world.
A lot later we learned that he’d been totally out of his skull during his famous Walmart coup. He’d heard his brothers talking around the table about a dumb urban legend claiming that in all the Walmarts in the world there was a million dollars in hundred dollar bills stashed in a safe. Bezeau told everyone he was going to the convenience store, he picked up the one-shot 12-gauge that had belonged to his dead grandfather, and he took off for the Place du Royaume. It must have been 8:30 at night. Once there he stormed in, shouting at the top of his voice that he wanted the million. He bonked a cashier who called him a moron, he charged the cash desk, and, somewhat hysterical, he fired in the air, by some miracle not killing anyone. He realized that he’d left the rest of his cartridges in the car, and he fled the scene with about a hundred and sixty dollars in his pockets.
We’d already figured out that our criminal genius was mildly retarded. The day before we left, Big Lé gave him five hundred dollars out of the fifteen hundred he’d received as an advance. He told him to fill up on gas and to buy beer in cans, Molson Ex or Labatt Blue, so they’d look like Coke or Pepsi, and to buy lots to eat so we wouldn’t have to stop much on the way. When Bezeau came back, he’d bought us each a beef jerky, plain chips, vinegar chips, ketchup chips, and five grams of coke.
He apologized for having forgotten the gas and the beer, but he boasted about having got a good deal on the coke.
The worst of it was that crossing south through the parkland was like his very own Kryptonite. He’d only done it once, to go to prison, and by the time we got to the other end he was scared of his own shadow. Everything spooked him, he was afraid of being caught, and the last night, before crossing the border, he said:
“Anyway, if it’s a fuck-up tomorrow, I’m spilling everything. I’m not going back inside just for your stupid plan.”
There were two double beds in the room. América slept in one, Lévis and me in the other, and we’d installed Bezeau on the floor at the end of our bed like a little dog. I was the one who’d wanted to strangle him for the last two days, but finally it was Lévy who jumped him, with his two hundred and forty odd pounds. He threw himself at him on the floor and started hammering him with his fists on both sides of his head, shouting:
“Shut the fuck up, Bezeau. Shut your fucking mouth.”
América, down on the ground, was weeping and wailing, “Están locos, están completamente locos.”
Lévis got up, looked at her, and said:
“Cállate tú también. No jodas con la policía. No jodas con la coca. Quédate aquí y deja de llorar. Mañana estarás en Estados Unidos.”
*
Our third mistake was not to have asked for enough money.
We left Montreal early, about seven in the morning. We took the 401 to the Ontario border, and drove until evening to Windsor, stopping to eat.
Before looking for a motel, we went for a walk along the Detroit River. At one point, there was a telescope. Big Lé put a whole quarter into the slot so América could see the other shore. She stayed there for a long time, gazing at Detroit. When Bezeau started getting restless, Lé said, “Just lay off, leave her alone.”
As far as I know, she’d never seen the States so close.
I saw Lévis was getting nervous. We found a seedy-looking motel and checked in. Bezeau went to bed, and América came with the rest of us onto the terrace to take in the sun. Lévis told me there wasn’t much money left out of the $1500. We phoned one of our buddies in Montreal, who knew a lot about the law, to ask his advice. The first thing he asked Lévis was:
“How much are you doing this for?”
“Three thousand.”
“You guys really are babes in the woods.”
Then he asked how we thought we were going to come back into the country with one passenger missing. Especially since Lévis had sponsored her for a visa.
“I thought I’d play dumb. At Canadian customs. I’ll say I got taken and the girl took off with my cash.”
“That’s not bad. You won’t be able to go back to the States for a good long time, but that’s not bad. As long as Jay backs your story like he should. If I were you, I’d leave the other cokehead at the motel.”
We looked at each other, Lé and me. The guy was right.